Moving forward in Orange County, Florida
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
(The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation)Today marks an exciting turn in the
relationship between the schools and
communities that make up Orange County,
Florida.
The Count Me In! Initiative - organized by
The Foundation
for Orange County Public Schools through a
partnership with The Harwood Institute - is
unveiling a "Community-Wide Agreement" that
lays out residents' aspirations for their
community and schools, and what people are
willing to do to achieve those aspirations. The
agreement is the result of dozens of
citizen-led authentic civic engagement
conversations that included more than 1,000
residents over the past year.
The Foundation for Orange County Public
Schools has put Harwood principles, tools, and
frameworks to use over the past year, and as a
result, their Count Me In! initiative not only
has collected the aspirations of the community
and created a covenant for moving forward to
make progress on schools, but they also have
generated a "civic brigade" of citizen-leaders
who are now poised to work within the community
to make these aspirations a reality. The
foundation, as a result, has enhanced its
capacity as a catalytic organization.
The work in Orange County represents yet
another example of how The Harwood Institute
can partner with civic-minded organizations to
apply its knowledge on community change. Our
approach to building community is based on the
notion that people have retreated from public
life and politics. This reality creates unique
challenges for anyone trying to marshal the
collective will to tackle tough public
issues.
The Harwood Institute is interested in
helping individuals and organizations build the
norms, networks, structures, and relationships
needed to make communities work. We call this
"public capital." To build public capital, two
ingredients are necessary: catalytic
organizations like the Foundation for Orange
County Schools, and people we call public
innovators, who are often found in these
organizations and are highly pragmatic but also
very idealistic.
- If you would like to learn more about
becoming a catalytic organization, please
contact Salin Geevarghese of The Harwood
Institute at (301) 656-3669 or sgeevarghese@theharwoodinstitute.org.
- If you are interested in developing your core competencies as a public innovator and learning more about what it takes to make progress in today's society, then click here to learn more about The Harwood Public Innovators Lab.